When I bought a new car at the beginning of this year, I was introduced to this wonderful program called ZAG from Bank of America (http://bankofamerica.zag.com/main.html). ZAG was a members-only program that was made freely available by BofA to everyone, not just account holders. There is no catch or strings attached; BofA gets a cut from the dealer. Here’s how it works:

You select the car make and model that you want on their website. BofA will identify three dealers in the Zipcode of your choice (no restrictions) who are guaranteed to provide a price that is lower than the Invoice tag (note, NOT MSRP). All you do is print and provide the Zag certificate to the dealer – you are guaranteed to get the car at the quoted price. No Haggling whatsoever. Moreover, you can additionally select the options that you would like, again all at invoice price! As you can see, I have become an unpaid ambassador for this program ever since I benefited from it. This was my best car buying experience ever. Now, the program is not restricted to new cars alone – you can also buy used cars but I don’t have experience with it and cannot provide much help there.

But for anyone who is on the market for a new car, this is a must-stop destination, it is a no-brainer (takes 10mins to print the certificate) and there is a very good chance that anyone who doesn’t use it is bound to pay more. Another customer in the neighboring cubicle at the dealership while we were there paid a handsome $2K more than what we paid for the same car. Another tit-bit is to check alternate zipcodes while researching – high-volume dealers in bigger cities give a much better discount. For example, I used to live in TN – while dealers in TN offered $1,500- below invoice price, a dealer in Columbia, SC and another in Chicago, IL offered $2,500- below the invoice (note, MSRP was $1,500 above invoice). I drove down to SC to buy my car ($1,000 earnings on a $100 investment for rental/gas in one-day!).

I was a little apprehensive of buying a car from out-of-state but internet shopping for cars is the current trend. Major dealers are beginning to establish/expand internet sales departments. We had two out-of-state customers at the SC dealer when we went to buy our car. When you buy a car out-of-state, you simply pay the taxes for the state in which you will be registering the car.